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Does Your Skin Crawl Whenever You Spot a Grammar Mistake

Do you belong to those who, whenever they hear or see a grammar mistake from someone else, cannot “let it go”, but rush to spot it and fix the criminals who did it?
If you really bother the grammatical mistakes of others, then, according to science, you are generally a little difficult character.

Researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a study titled “If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email” to identify these types of personality, which are more “sensitive” to grammar errors.

The scientists examined the cases of 83 people who have read emails with spelling mistakes (such as “teh” instead of “the”), grammatical errors (such as “your” instead of “you’re”). After all emails were read, participants were asked if they had identified any errors and, if so, how much it bothered them.

Prior to this, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire for assessing their personality. It is a way that determines the level of extroversion of an individual, willingness, conscientiousness, but also how open is a person in their interpersonal relationships. They were also asked to judge/rate the email writers based on their character traits, such as the intelligence and friendliness they showed through these emails.

The results of the survey were probably … expected. People with “less enjoyable” personalities seemed to be bothered more by the grammar mistake, editorial mistakes and spelling mistakes of others. Researchers believe this is because people with this type of personality are “less tolerant of what deviates from regularity.”

They also found that more “extrovert” people were more likely to ignore any spelling and grammatical mistakes, while introverts tend to point out and judge the writer, or the speaker, who does it.

Also, those survey participants who were more “conscientious,” but less “open”, showed the greatest sensitivity to the typos. However, how neurotic one is, it did not seem to have any effect on the way he/she identifies and judges the grammatical mistakes.

Some people considered this research as a bit “offensive”. But since the size of the sample was very small, we don’t think we need to consider the findings of this study, as more and more thorough research is needed on a larger sample to confirm the results of the University of Michigan researchers …